


Airwaves

by likeasouffle



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Write What You Know fest, community radio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeasouffle/pseuds/likeasouffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Kurt and Blaine first meet while volunteering on a community radio station. Blaine has just started his show about cover songs, and he needs a little help with the technical aspects from Kurt, who hosts the previous show about Broadway. One thing that’s important to remember is to always be aware of whether the microphone is still on. ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Write What You Know Fest. This is a commission for marauder-in-warblerland. Thank you so much!  
> [Here is the Tumblr post.](http://likearumchocolatesouffle.tumblr.com/post/82659277664/airwaves-1-3-klaine-fic)

“That was the original cast recording of  _First, Best, Only_  from the show of the same name. I’m your host, Kurt, and you’ve been listening to  _Broadway Baby_  on WNYD, your community radio station in New York. Our last song of the hour is _Waiting on a Disappearing Boy_ , which is a personal favourite of mine from the Broadway classic  _Mario & Julie_. Stay tuned for a brand new program by a brand new host here on WNYD. I’m excited to hear what they have for us! Talk to you next time!”

Kurt hits play on the CD player and switches the mic off. As the music plays, he stands up, stretches his arms over his head, and then steps out of the on-air booth into the music library. He looks around, but there’s no sign of anyone waiting to go on. He wanders down the hall to the office of Artie, the volunteer coordinator, and knocks on the doorframe.

“Hey, is someone supposed to be here right now?”

“Umm…” Artie slowly turns his head toward Kurt without taking his eyes off the computer screen. Then he actually looks at him and snaps to attention. “What? Yeah, I have someone booked. Is he not here?

“I don’t see anyone.”

“That sucks.” He frowns. “Put on a re-run of  _Rock Roulette_  or something. I’ll figure it out by next week.“

“Thanks, Artie.” Kurt goes back to the booth and finds an hour long segment on iTunes, one that hasn’t been played in a while, and sets it up. He leans against the wall and sips his coffee, watching the song’s remaining time tick down.

There are less than thirty seconds to go when a blur of motion bursts into the on-air booth and throws itself into the chair in front of the sound board. Kurt almost spits his coffee out in surprise. The guy who has just appeared, looking flustered and rumpled, breathlessly says: “I’m so sorry I’m late!” The guy grabs a CD out of his bag, loads it into CD 1, and slides the Mic 1 fader up just in the nick of time.

He says into the microphone: “Hi everyone, welcome to the first episode of  _Cover Lover_. I’m Blaine, and over the next hour I’ll be sharing with you all kinds of covers of great songs. We’ll talk a bit about the history of covers, why they’re called covers, and how they’ve influenced the history of pop music. And we’ll get to hear some interesting remakes that change the musical style or even the gender pronouns from the original versions. Hopefully by next week I’ll have a theme song for the show, but for now let’s start with something close to my heart: it’s The Illinoise Ordinance doing an a cappella version of the heavy metal classic, _Pressure Change_. Here it is, on WNYD-FM.”

He slides the CD fader up, presses play on the CD player, and nothing happens. He waits a moment, as if there might just be a bit of silence at the beginning of the track, but there’s no change. His eyes widen. He slides the fader even further up. “What-?”

Kurt leans over the sound board and clicks the Mic 1 channel off.

“Why isn’t it playing? What do I-?”

After a quick look at the set up, Kurt presses a button on CD 1 and suddenly the booth is filled with sound. It’s  _loud_ , and both of them jump. Kurt slides the volume down to a more appropriate level.

“Oh my god.” The new guy, Blaine, exhales deeply. “Thank you  _so much_. I was freaking out.”

“It’s no problem.” Kurt smiles. “The first episode of anything is always rough.”

“I’m so embarrassed. What…  _exactly_ , did I do wrong?”

“The channel has to be both  _up_  and  _on_. The mics turn on automatically when they’re up, but with everything else, you have to move the slider  _and_  hit the button.”

Blaine studies the board. “ _Up_  and  _on_ , got it. Thank you, I really owe you one.”

“No you don’t. Just do a great show, okay? That’s all the payment I need.”

Blaine smiles, blushing. It makes him kind of cute. “I’ll do my best. Thank you again.”

Kurt finds himself blushing as well. He switches his coffee to his other hand and grabs his jacket before heading out the door. “See you next week!”


	2. Chapter 2

“Stay tuned for an hour of great new covers of songs you already love, and maybe some you’ve never heard before. Let’s segue right into the cover theme with a lesser known number from  _Alright Ronny_. This is  _Uncover Your Ears_ , which didn’t actually make it into the movie version because the director was clearly smoking something exotic. I’m Kurt and you’ve been listening to  _Broadway Baby_  here on WNYD. Until next time!”

Blaine arrives halfway through the song, but instead of sitting down in the booth, he rushes over to the B section in the music library and starts flipping through the CDs. “I’m sorry I’m late again! I just need to find something really quick!”

Kurt leans one hip against the doorframe and watches him. “That’s okay. You have…” He peeks into the booth to see the countdown on the CD player. “Just over two minutes.”

Blaine mumbles distractedly: “Two minutes, two minutes, got it…” As the seconds count down, his movements start getting more frantic, and soon he’s shoving CDs aside more forcefully than necessary. “Where the heck- Isn’t this supposed to be alphabetical?”

Kurt checks the time again. “Thirty seconds.”

“Shoot! Okay. I’m just gonna-” Blaine tears himself away from the shelf and steps toward the booth, then back to the shelf. Then back toward the booth. He puts both fists against his face and takes a deep breath. “I need to find this CD. I can’t announce the show and then have nothing to play.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll buy you some time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Just find that CD!”

Blaine breathes: “Thank you. Thank you.” He returns to the shelf and starts searching somewhat more slowly and carefully, expanding his search into A and C.

When the song ends, Kurt slides the volume up on Mic 1 and says: “Welcome to the second episode of  _Cover Lover_. For the next hour, your host Blaine is going to play reinvented versions of older songs and share a little bit of music history too. If you missed last week, he talked about how cover versions have long been used to boost the popularity of both songs and artists. If a song was having good sales, new artists would record it to make the song even more popular, and to get the word out about themselves. If I understood correctly, sometimes in the past there was a race aspect to it too. If a black group had a well-liked song, a white group would record it to make it more likely the song would be bought by white audiences. Also, Blaine couldn’t confirm this, but apparently the word ‘cover’ might come from the fact that records in stores would literally be covered up by new versions being placed in front of them on shelves.”

That’s when Blaine rushes back into the room and slides a disc into CD 2. He presses next until he reaches track five.

“It was fascinating stuff, and I’m hoping to talk Blaine into starting a podcast so you’ll be able to listen back to any episodes you missed.” Kurt looks over and exchanges a smile with Blaine. “He was also going to talk about gender swapped covers, but ran out of time due to technical issues, so hopefully he’ll get to that today. Anyway, the first song of the hour is by…” He leans toward Blaine and reads the front of the CD case he’s holding. “The Boise Girls Choir. Clever name! Here it is on  _Cover Lover_  here on WNYD.” He turns off the mic and turns on the CD 2 channel. “Is it set up to play the right track?”

“Uh, yeah, track five.”

He hits play. As the song starts, Blaine slumps against the wall and breathes a sigh of relief. “I am so sorry.”

Kurt shrugs. “I’ve gotten pretty good at improvising.”

"I can’t believe you remembered all that from my show. You were really listening?"

"Of course! I have the WNYD app on my phone, and I have a long bus ride home, so…"

“Even so. The fact that you paid attention is- I really appreciate it.” He looks toward the door and the music library beyond. “I should find the next CD. I don’t suppose- Is there any chance I can play a song right off my iPod?”

“You sure can! There’s a special cable just for that.” Kurt leans over the mixing board to find the cable and pulls it closer. “Just plug it into your headphone jack and turn on the Auxiliary channel.”

“Thank you. Maybe I should do that for  _everything_.” Blaine gets his iPod out of his pocket and starts scrolling through his playlist. “By the way, I  _am_  going to start arriving on time. It’s just the buses-”

“Oh it’s the  _buses_ , suuuure…” Kurt teases.

“No, I’m serious! If they ran when they were scheduled to, I’d get here with almost seven minutes to spare.”

“That’s not a lot of leeway.”

“Yeah, I’m figuring that out.” Blaine pouts while he plugs in his iPod, and ends up looking  _extremely_  adorable.

Kurt hides his smile by taking a sip of coffee. “So, set up the song to play in advance, turn on the channel and turn the volume up on the device  _and_  the board, and when you’re ready you just have to hit play.”

Blaine does as Kurt suggests. “I assume I could make a whole playlist for the episode in advance, so I wouldn’t have to search for anything?”

“Definitely! You just have to remember to press stop when you want to talk. And make sure it’s not on shuffle.”

“Thank you.” When the song ends, Blaine turns on the mic and says: “Welcome back to  _Cover Lover_. I’m your host Blaine, and that was  _Crazy About My Man_  by The Boise Girls Choir. It was obviously originally called  _Crazy About My Girl_ , which we’ve all heard, and a lot of the lyrics were changed for this version to make it sound like it’s from a straight woman’s perspective. I like how parts of it even sound like they’re responding to the original. For example where it originally said ‘I’ll take care of you / when you’re feeling blue,’ this version says ‘You took care of me / made me so happy.’ It’s like a continuation of the same story. Anyway, next we’re going to hear some glam rock. I was so excited when I found out there was a current glam rock band making new music with that classic late seventies sound. This is Gloss with their cover of  _Snake Eyes_  here on WNYD.”

Blaine hits play and leans back in his chair. He chuckles nervously, looking anywhere but at Kurt. “So… thank you again for, you know-”

Kurt gasps and rushes over, setting his coffee down on the table and leaning over the board to switch the mic off.

“Shoot! Did everyone just hear that?”

Kurt laughs. “It’s okay, you didn’t say anything scandalous.”

“Oh my god. Thank you for rescuing me. And you know, everything else.”

“Now you really  _do_  owe me.”

“So…” Blaine bites his lip and looks up at Kurt through his eyelashes. “How can I repay you? Is there a favor I could do you?”

Kurt blushes. “Uh.” He swallows, and gets his jacket from the back of the chair Blaine is sitting in. “Not at the moment. Actually I’ve already hung around longer than I meant to. I really should get going.”

Blaine nods and studies the mixing board. “Okay, well, have a good night then.”

“I’ll see you next week though.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Kurt smiles to himself on his way out of the building. He puts on his headphones and listens to Blaine’s show, but even so he keeps going over the conversation in his head while riding the bus. He’s almost all the way home by the time he realizes he was so distracted he left his coffee behind. Damn.


	3. Chapter 3

Kurt has been singing along with the current song, but he squeaks when he turns and sees Blaine in the doorway. “Oh my god! You startled me!”

“Sorry!” Blaine steps into the booth and puts the two coffees he’d been holding onto the table. “You’re an  _incredible_  singer. I’ve never heard anything like that.”

Kurt rolls his eyes self-deprecatingly, but smiles. “Well I’m one of a kind, that’s for sure.”

“No really, you should be  _famous_.”

“You flatter me.” He blushes. “But more importantly:  _Two_  coffees, Blaine? Whoever could those be for?”

“Oh! This is for you! I got you the same kind you had last week. You left it behind and it had checkmarks on the side, so… Oh my god, is this creepy?”

“It’s not creepy. It’s sweet.” Kurt smiles, takes it, and takes a sip. “You know, you didn’t really owe me.”

“I know.” Blaine ducks his head. “I just wanted to do something for you.”

“I wasn’t expecting anyone to hear me singing.” Kurt laughs and blushes. “You actually made it on time for once.”

“Yeah, I figured out a shortcut from the bus stop. It takes two minutes out of my routine.”

Just then, Artie wheels into the booth. “Hey guys, how’s the new show going?”

Blaine smiles politely. “I’m learning. Thankfully I have Kurt to help. I think it’s going pretty well, thank you so much for asking.”

“Oh, pssh.” Kurt rolls his eyes. “He’s doing a fabulous job. He doesn’t even need me.”

“That’s not true at all, your expertise has been so helpful.”

Kurt smiles and keeps looking in Blaine’s direction as he speaks. “Anyway, the point is, the show is going excellently, it’s really interesting and a lot of fun. I think the station is really lucky to have Blaine.”

Artie looks from Kurt to Blaine and back again. He raises his eyebrows. “Uh huh.” He nods knowingly. “Glad to hear it. Let me know if you need anything, Blaine.”

“Thank you, I will.”

Kurt says: “I should really get going. But thank you so much for the coffee. I’ll see you next week okay?”

“Definitely. I’ll be here!”

Kurt turns on his phone and plugs in his headphones as he walks down the hall. He hears the song end, and Blaine back-announcing it. And when the next song starts, he hears Blaine  _totally_   _fail_  to turn the mic off.  _Again._

Quietly, in the background, some distance away from the mic, Artie says, “Soooo… what was up with all that flirtiness huh? Are you and Kurt, like, a  _thing_?”

Blaine outright  _g_ _iggles_ , right on air. “Oh my  _god_ , he’s so handsome and sweet. Was I being completely obvious?”

Kurt stops walking and just stands there for a moment, considering whether to run back and tell Blaine to turn the mic off, (would that be  _more_  humiliating for everyone involved, or  _less_?) or just wait and see what happens.

Thankfully the mic turns off a moment later without anything worse being said. Kurt walks away grinning stupidly, and he can hear Artie’s raucous laughter all the way down the hall.

–

“That was  _The Cutest Boy in Brooklyn_ , the original cast recording from the 1987 production of  _The Mods_. And speaking of cute boys, stay tuned for an hour of remakes and musical history on  _Cover Lover,_  hosted by the always charming Blaine. You’ve been listening to  _Broadway Baby_  here on WNYD, your community radio station in New York. My last song of the hour is  _It’s a Cover Up_  from  _Where’s the Fire, Marshall?_  So long for now!”

Blaine stands in the doorway and clears his throat. “Um…”

“Oh! You’re on time again! Hi!”

Blaine smiles squintily. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”

“No, not really, I just…” Kurt laughs.

“I really appreciate the kind words.”

“Oh my god.” Kurt grins and shakes his head. “Well. You’re welcome.”

Blaine hands a coffee cup to Kurt. “Your order, good sir?”

“My hero.” Kurt accepts it and takes a sip, peaking through his eyelashes at Blaine. He twists his shoulders from side to side.

“So…” Blaine leans against the doorframe and sips his own drink. “I have an idea for what to play for my first song of the hour.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a 1950s swing classic, but with rhythmic influences from modern pop. It’s called,” Blaine clears his throat, “ _Say You’ll Be My Steady_. Do you think that would be… appropriate?”

Kurt’s voice comes out as a breathy squeak. “That could work.”

Blaine steps closer. “The only problem is, I don’t know what to follow it up with. Do you have any ideas?”

“I might.”

Blaine smiles a little, hopeful smile. “What do you suggest?”

Kurt swallows and licks his lips. “A certain popular number I think we’ll both enjoy. There must be a cover of it around here somewhere.”

Blaine steps even closer and looks down at Kurt’s mouth. “And the title?”

“ _Absolutely Yes_.”


End file.
